Former Roblox Music Chief Joins Napster As CEO To Steward Its Evolution Into Web3

Napster, the company whose initial offering of free peer-to-peer file sharing nearly toppled the music industry at the turn of the millennium, has named Jon Vlassopulos, former vice president and global head of music at RobloxRBLX
, as CEO to steward its next evolution into web3.

Vlassopulos parted ways with Roblox in April after nearly three years during which he led the company’s initiatives to bring artists into the metaverse via immersive experiences that reached more than 100 million fans.

He tells Forbes he believes the hyper-social, connected universe of web3 is the way to further augment the artist-fan relationship—and Napster, which has been operating as a subscription-based streaming service, is the company to deliver the experience with a sustainable business model.

“I’ve been musing about how antisocial and unexciting streaming services were, so when I was offered one to innovate it was too much to pass it up,” he says of his new position, which he’ll announce September 26 during the All That Matters conference in Singapore.

After passing hands through a succession of owners, Napster this spring was purchased and taken private by two companies in the web3 orbit: Hivemind, which recently helped Limewire relaunch as an NFT marketplace, and Algorand, which builds cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol.

Napster is also currently in the midst of a new funding round with participation from new backers including SkyBridge Capital, Alumni Ventures, Borderless Capital and G20 Ventures. Brevan Howard Digital, Arrington Capital and RSE Ventures are among the existing investors of the music brand.

Beyond the capital infusion, Vlassopulos points to what he views as an inflection point in the music industry, the investment community and the general marketplace that points favorably to a scaled web3 offering.

In the nascent days of web3, some seven years ago, “consumers were pushing for it and tech was pushing for it, but rights holders and artists and some other people weren’t necessarily coming onboard,” he says. “Now we’ve got all the winds blowing. Consumers want it. Artists really want it because they’re fed up with the economics of the other platforms. Fans want it because they’ve got a taste of it now on platforms like Roblox where they can get closer to the artis they love and, ironically, now the labels are behind it.”

So what can users expect from the new Napster experience? Vlassopulos says it will build on the existing streaming service and layer on utility-based tokenomics, delivered on the Algorand backbone, for both fans and artists that “are more than collectibles.”

“Simple things like profiles starting to become wallets for both artists and users almost overnight, without any fancy jargon,” he says. “You log in and you see, ‘Oh I have a bunch of goodie bags in my profile.’ And based on 20 years of data we think we have a pretty good handle on what people might like and might not like.”

Whether or not the company can pull off a bona-fide blockchain success in today’s fickle marketplace remains to be seen. Napster currently counts “in the millions” of subscribers to its music streaming service, according to Vlassopulos. That compares to Spotify, with 188 million subscribers, and AppleAAPL
Music, projected to have close to 80 million.

But he believes Napster has some weapons in its arsenal the others are lacking.

“A lot of the other services are more like audio subscriptions, and especially with the push into audiobooks it’s really sort of an audio, commodity-driven subscription. We’re all about music, and artists are at the center of the experience.”

Napster is also the only service that has direct rights with every independent label as opposed to going through aggregators, Vlassopulos says, the legacy of its 20 years of relationships with the indie community.

“We want to bring the community together and enable the artists, with the data we have, to activate their communities around things like access to physical events and digital experiences,” he says. “You’ll start to see drumbeats with partnership announcements with artists and different partners over the coming months. And you’ll see some alignment with the live industry, which no one’s seen from streaming services up to this point.”

To delve more deeply into the metaverse, Napster is launching Napster Ventures, which will focus on fostering, investing in and acquiring web3 music startups. Algorand, in partnership with Napster, is also launching an artist development fund to help support the marketing and launch of the web3 artist projects globally.

“We are excited for Napster to be a central player in the music web3 ecosystem,” says Matt Zhang, Hivemind founder and managing partner. “We look forward to rallying all the amazing innovation that has happened to date so we can all collectively drive mainstream adoption of web3 technology for the music industry.”